Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - 6-year-old autistic girl shot, killed by mommy.

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

A 36-year-old mom kills her Autistic daughter and then herself. Nancy Grace looks at this case and others of Killer Moms, to learn how we can keep it from happening again.Joining Nancy Grace today: James Shelnutt - 27 years Atlanta Metro Area Major Case Detective, Swat officer Lawyer www.ShelnuttLawFirm.com Dr. Jeff Gardere - Board Certified Clinical Psychologist, Prof of Behavioral Medicine at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, www.drjeffgardere.com, Author: 'The Causes of Autism” @drjeffgardere Steven Lampley - Author, Speaker, Retired Police Officer and Undercover SVU Detective, Author, "12 and Murdered," www.stevendavidlampley.com, Facebook.com/StevenDavidLampleyPage Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet" featured on "Poisonous Liaisons" on True Crime Network Daphne Young, Childhelp.org Ray Caputo - Lead News Anchor for Orlando's Morning News, 96.5 WDBO Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. How does a six-year-old little girl end up dead? And what's the last thing the little girl sees before she dies? Her mother. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Take a listen now to our friends at ABC7 News. This is reporter Anthony Johnson. Family members making a grisly discovery. A mother and her six-year-old daughter shot to death.

The bodies of the two found inside their West Orange apartment on Sunday. New Jersey reporter Anthony Johnson with the latest on the investigation. This tragedy occurred at a normally quiet corner apartment building where they normally know each other. So everyone that we've spoken to today says they are in shock. I guess they are. A six-year-old child dead. The last thing she sees is mommy's face. Joining me, an all-star panel, James Shelnut, 27 years, Metro major case, including SWAT, been on many, many a crime scene, now lawyer at ShelnutLawFirm.com. Dr. Jeff Gardier, clinical psychologist, professor, behavioral medicine at Truro, author of The Causes of Autism. And you can find him at drjeffgardier.com.

Stephen Lampley, former cop undercover, author of 12 and Murdered. You can find it on Amazon. He's at stephendavidlampley.com. His book, 12 and Murdered. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, star of a new hit series, Poisonous Liaisons on the True Crime Network, Joseph Scott Morgan with me, death investigator. But first, straight out to lead news anchor for WDBO, Ray Caputo. Ray, how does a six-year-old

little girl end up dead? Nancy, I mean, I'll tell you, it's not it's the thing that's farthest from your mind with a little child. But in this case, it was her own mom. It was the person who was there to protect her. Kids are not supposed to die at the hands of their parents. But this is what happened. It's very hard for me to believe, you know, when you look statistically at methods and assessment of homicide and suicide

to you, Justice Scott Morgan, you've been on many a scene where you have to decide what exactly happened. That's your job. Very Bardan, affect a murder with a gun, statistically speaking, much less a suicide by gun. That's very unheard of, Joe Scott. I think that at one point, Tom, that would be the case. But I think the pressures of life now, the space that women occupy in the workforce, I think that that's changed a bit. They're under a lot more pressure. Throughout my career, I saw what you were saying early on, but as time has gone along, I saw more and more women dying as a result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds,

particularly toward the end of my dying as a result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, particularly toward the end of my career as a practitioner than I had way back in the early 80s at the start of my career. You may see it more and more, but still, I believe it's statistically very low. It is. A woman kills her child, it's usually by asphyxiation, overdosing them on Benadryl or whatever you want to OD them on, drowning them. I haven't seen a lot of women that shoot their six-year-old daughter dead. Guys, take a listen to our friends at ABC7, Anthony Johnson.

Authorities let residents know there was no threat to the community, but this has rattled everyone living in this West Orange apartment complex. Authorities say there was never any sign of forced entry into the apartment, but they are continuing their investigation. Well, right there to you, James Shelnut, ShelnutLawFirm.com, you're seeing where the cop's mind is going. There's no forced entry. There's nothing stolen.

There's no sex attack. It's all leading up to one thing, and that one thing is what, Shellnut? It's leading up to a murder-suicide. Yeah, because nobody broke in. Nothing is missing. The home isn't ransacked. You've got a 36-year-old mother in the home with her dead six-year-old little girl. Now, what do I understand, Ray Caputo, about the little girl having, quote,

special needs? Yeah, and if she was autistic, you know, there are a lot of children these days who identify as being on the spectrum. So, you know, we just know that the child presented a different challenge to the mom. And think about when this happened. This happened at the end of May. So this school is still in session in West Orange in that area. Wait a minute. To Dr. Jeff Gardier, for a 36-year-old mom, and I understand that you've got the mom with a 6-year-old little girl

with special needs. It's during COVID. So the little girl is at home. Daphne Young from ChildHelp and their number 800-422-4433. Daphne, how is it different for a parent with a special needs child versus a parent with a ordinary child, a normal child? Nancy, you know, when you were looking forward to your twins, you probably already had a lot of dreams in mind. This is what I'm going to name my kids. This is what they're going to do in their future. I hope they go to this college,

maybe my alma mater. And as you learn that you have a special needs child, a lot of those dreams have to shift and change. A lot of the future goals get rewritten. And wonderful parents can reboot and pivot and create new dreams and lives and new goals and objectives. But there's a little period of mourning that comes from just kind of the way that we all imagine our children's futures. And so when a child has special needs that involve day-to-day care, it's also very difficult just to schedule life. You know, there's always maybe a need that comes up, a medical appointment that has to happen, an emergency room run, or an outburst you weren't planning for. And it can be very difficult to get a sense of normalcy and balance in life. What does COVID have to do with this, Jeff Gardier? Well, what we know is that if we're dealing with a child who has special needs, going to an online

education, that is one of the least effective ways to be able to help the child because these wonderful children really need to be in the school setting to get all of their services. Quite often, they just don't have the focus to be able to stay in front of a computer. That's part of some of the ADHD that they have. And the other part of that is it's overwhelming for the parents who are looking at all of these special needs, in this case, the parent not getting the support most likely. And it was just overwhelming for her to now have to be able to coordinate all of these services online and who knows what other emotions she was going through, including depression and anxiety from having to deal with all of this COVID related issues on her own with her daughter.

Yakety yakety yak. Stress, pressure. I get it. But does she, your own six year old child? And also when you're talking about stresses and pressure, this mother planned what she did, Jeff Gardeer, because she intentionally waited until her husband walked out. I don't know if he ran an errand. I don't know if he went to work, but she waited until he left. Then she secured a gun and shot her six-year-old daughter dead. Now, able to plan and murder her child without being stopped, that shows me intent.

And if I see intent, that means this woman was not insane at the time, Gardier. No, it certainly does show that she was not insane, but it doesn't preclude that there were serious mental health issues that may have been part of her life. After all, she then turned around and killed herself. So this wasn't a crime of opportunism. It was one of, it appears to be, Nancy, one of desperation and complete helplessness in her life. Yes, Dr. Jeff Gardier is a board-certified clinical psychologist. Yes, he's a professor of behavioral medicine at Truro.

Yes, he's an author of The Causes of Autism. And I don't claim to know more than him about mental illness, but I do know the mother fortuitously waited until her husband left, and then she kills her six-year-old child. Now, maybe a jury would have agreed with me that the mother knew exactly what she was doing, and that she turned the gun on herself out of feelings of guilt. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about the death of a six-year-old little girl.

So defenseless. And to top it all off, she's at home alone with mommy during COVID. Listen. 36-year-old Sushmita Bardhan and her 6-year-old daughter are found dead by a family member in their West Orange, New Jersey apartment on May 31st. The mother and daughter sustained fatal gunshot wounds. Their deaths are being investigated by West Orange Police and the Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force. The name of the six-year-old female victim has not been released. The child attended Kelly School and with special needs. What I'm trying to figure out is how the whole thing could have been avoided. Guys, you're hearing from our friends at CrimeOnline.com. Listen to this. They were very quiet. They didn't socialize with anybody because everybody in our corner over there, we all sit outside.

We're friendly. And it's unusual that something like this would. It's very, hit everybody by surprise. Everybody. You're hearing our friend from ABC7. You know, I'm very curious to you, Steve Lampley, author, speaker, the author of 12 and Murdered, former cop. Stephen, why is it that no one believes it can happen in their neighborhood? You just heard a neighbor saying very quiet.

There's no crime there, a beautiful corner apartment looking out, and they're all stunned. When will people get it through their heads that crime happens in every neighborhood? Nancy, that's unfortunately the fact of the matter. In a similar note, when I go out to schools and I go out to talk to parent groups, I inevitably, almost 100% of the time, hear the phrase, well, we live so-and-so, it won't happen here. I hear that over and over and over, and I don't know why people think they have immunity when they don't. This crime happens everywhere.

You may not hear about it, but it happens everywhere. You know, to you, Death Investigator Joseph Scott Morgan, it's assumed that this is a murder-suicide. How do you look at the forensics, at the trajectory paths, at the location of bullets, cartridges, blood spatter, and determine was this a murder-suicide or was this a double homicide? Well, one of the things that you've already mentioned actually is a big clue for us is, are there any signs of forced entry or struggle at the scene? And that's a big red flag for us. Also, I've worked a lot of familial murder-suicide cases over my career. you have those that involve the husband and wife, and those are actually

different than when you work those that are involving a parent and a child. I've actually seen cases, Nancy, where people have posed their children. They'll put stuffed animals around them, all these sorts of things after they have killed the child. And so sometimes you'll have this adjustment of the scene. So you have to be very, very careful when you, for instance, examine the wounds on the child. I have no idea where the injuries on the child are. However, I would be looking for, first off, a range of fire. That is the distance from the muzzle to the injury and also the trajectory that it traveled. Was it from above to below? Was it from side to side? And try to get

an idea as to what position was the victim in relative to the shooter. And this is going to tell us a lot. Were they in a position where they could get very intimate with a person? I mean, up close and personal in order to facilitate that. And that also goes to this idea, how purposed was the person to kill this individual? Did they just kind of hear them, scare them, wound them? You know, maybe they shot him a couple of times, or maybe while the child was asleep, and I've seen this happen, they were essentially executed in their sleep. So all of that has to be borne in mind when you're conducting an investigation into these things. Straight out to James Shelnut, 27 years Metro major case, now lawyer at ShelnutLawFirm.com. Where would video surveillance and potential cell phone nav weigh into this to determine who, if anyone else, was in that apartment?

Well, you know, I mean, a lot of people nowadays have ring doorbells. A lot of people have surveillance cameras, even in these apartment complexes. The complexes themselves have videos that would potentially show whether or not someone was making entry or exit. Supposedly, there was another family member earlier in the day that was at the house. I believe that the child's father, um, or her husband that had left, but this supposedly occurred while it was gone. Um, you know, looking at GPS nav on phones, you know,

the first thing you're going to want to do is check, check that father that husband's phone to see if there's any indication, any tracking, any, any, uh, electronic footprint to indicate whether or not he was or was not in that area at the time and back up his alibi. I think those things are critical to not just necessarily ruling someone in, but also ruling someone out as a suspect. I agree with you, Shelnut, because if there was a ring doorbell, we use ours all the time, you can see who's coming in and out or even just to the door. So when the father left the home just before the shootings occurred, that would be captured on the ring video.

We understand there's only one entrance to the door. That may or may not be correct. But if so, was there video on the corners of nearby apartment buildings directed toward the home? If so, and very likely so, you would have seen if someone goes in or out of the home from both doors. Also, regarding the cell phone navigation, you would see where the father went. Cell phones even pick up how many steps you've gone, whether you have the app or not on your Fitbit. Very often, your cell phone is tracking your every move. I've seen murder cases cracked just recently because a husband showed up 18 steps on a Fitbit or a phone nav when he said he was asleep at the time

of his wife's murder. Bam, busted, convicted. So what do we know about who's going in and out of the home? What do we know about the positioning of the bodies? As Joe Scott Morgan tells you, they're going to be looking at the trajectory path. That simply means the angle of the entry and the exit wounds on the bodies. Were the bodies found snuggling together? Remember Joe Scott Morgan in the Andre Yates case where she killed every last one of her children by drowning them dead. She then staged them. She also carefully waited for her husband, Rusty, to leave.

And then she killed all the children one by one. The children struggled to live. Even the baby, Mary, was covered in bruises where she was forced to be held underwater. So I'm just curious about your analysis regarding the trajectory paths and why this was so quickly deemed a murder-suicide, Joe Scott? Well, I think that what you have, we call it asymmetry, and that is where you have one individual that is in a dominant position over another. Now, you know, there's all kinds of psychological things you can explain with asymmetry. But in a physical sense, what is the relationship between the the large the larger person and the smaller person? And how close in that space can can they get to this individual?

Now, here we're just talking about a six year old girl who, in fact, is disabled. So it really wouldn't take that much. I think that analyzing this scene from relative to the range of fire and trajectory is going to be very, very important. One key element here is you're going to have a couple of collections of blood here. Okay, you'll have what was generated from this precious little angel and then from the perpetrator, her mom. So, for instance, if you have some kind of blood staining that's associated with a little girl, you're going to want to know if that's the initial impact. And that goes to the bigger issue, like staging the scene.

If she was removed from that spot and then moved to another, that's going to change the relationship on this. My suspicion is, is that she probably killed this child in that location. There was no staging involved. That's going to give the police an indication that she killed her right there. And then the mother, you know, went on to kill herself later. Well, for instance, in the Andrea Yates case, we see where the mother staged all the children, taking them out of the bathtub and then laying them out on a bed side by side, all of the children. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about what we believe to be a murder-suicide,

or is it? I know this much. A six-year-old little girl with special needs is dead by gunshot wound. Did mommy do the deed? Take a listen to our friends at ABC7. According to neighbors, the little girl was killed by a mother, a mother who felt too much pressure raising a child with special needs. According to a source, the father had left the house at the time. And while he was gone, the mother took out a gun and shot her six year old daughter and then turned the gun on herself. And what is being described as a murder suicide. According to sources, the mother had expressed feelings of being overwhelmed, but no one could have expected a tragedy like this

to be the sad final result. I want to circle back to Andrea Yates, possibly the most high-profile case where mom, in that case, murders multiple children. I remember speaking with the husband, Rusty Yates, and many people wondered, could he not tell what condition Andrew Yates was in? There was a point, I don't know if you remember this or not, out to you, Dr. Jeff Gardier, where Rusty Yates had sold the home or given up the home and moved the wife and all, I think there were five children, all of the children into a school bus. And he had a very good job. I want to say he was an engineer, not sure about that, but of that ilk of education.

So why would he put his wife and children to live in a school bus? Certainly, it appears that it was a very poor judgment, a way to marginalize some of the pressure in his own life, perhaps a very selfish act. But it again speaks to, and I think what we may be seeing here, just being completely overwhelmed by the pressures of the financial and emotional caring for a child. Certainly not an excuse, but a possible mitigating factor. It's not the first time that a mother has killed her children

and oftentimes herself. Just recently in the news, a 25-year-old mother who reportedly killed her own three children, two of her stepchildren. Take a listen to our friends at thesun.com. We're talking about Oriana Myers. She shot all five kids in the head. She left a letter, a confession stating she shot all five kids in the head. She set the house on fire and went outside and shot herself. My name is Raven Bumgarner, and I'm the mother of Sean and Riley. I received a picture and some text messages from Brian's cousin who lives down the road.

The house was on fire, completely engulfed. I jumped in my car and I left and I got there and the house was gone. It was a chimney left and flames. She took their lives. How could you do that to children? They described she used a shotgun, a single-action shotgun, so you have to break it down and reload it after every single shot. So how can you do that five times to five children?

I love them, and I miss them. And I know they're looking out for me and their sister. Overwhelmed to the point that you not only kill yourself, but all of your children. To James Shelnut, a 27 years Metro major case, now lawyer. James, I heard what Joe Scott Morgan just said, but I still say it is very rare for a female of this age to kill themselves by gun, much less in Oriana Meyer's case with a shotgun. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, Joe Scott brings up a whole main society's change, culture's change. And so that has affected the numbers, but I still think you're correct that it is very rare. Matter of fact, murder-suicide in itself is very rare. The times that I've come across it, it's normally a middle-aged male as the perpetrator who murders his wife or kids and then kills himself.

Very rarely is it a female. And very rarely, especially with the example you brought up, a man to go with a shotgun is a very rare occurrence. You've got to re-rack it between each shot, giving you time under the law to form intent. Out to you, Stephen Lampley, former cop, now author and speaker, author of 12 and Murdered on Amazon. Steve Lampley, have you ever seen a female of this age, the mom is 36 years old, kill her children and herself by gun? Nancy, I haven't. But now there are exceptions. As a matter of fact, an ex-police partner attempted to kill herself with a gun. But there are exceptions to that rule. But most of the time when we find it again, I'll go back to Joe Scott. He's correct. Times are changing. It's becoming a lot more frequent. But I have in my career, I've never come across that. Neither have I, but I believe you, Joe Scott,

it may be more frequent, maybe one or two more a year across the country, but I'll go with you, man. And we were saying earlier, and I was speaking to Lampley about this, it doesn't matter where you live or how much money you make, crime can touch your life. I want to touch on another aspect to you, Dr. Jeff Gardere, who wrote The Causes of Autism. When this mother is saying that she is overwhelmed with raising her six-year-old daughter with special needs to the point where she kills, murders her daughter, and we think takes her own life, what does she mean by overwhelmed? Quite often what we see is that our educational institutions, Nancy, as much as they may want to try, are not completely sensitive to the needs of parents who have special needs children. They may be able to give the children the care that they need, the special programs, the individualized educational programs. But the parents are pretty much left on their own in dealing with their own emotions around this. And as well, society makes

a lot of judgments against our incredible children who have some of these issues. And so these parents feel that they are alone in dealing with the needs of their children. Stephanie Young from Child Help with us. Stephanie, what would you have said to Shashmima Bardhan? I think any parent in crisis needs to hear there's help. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be overwhelmed. But your child needs love and care and safety. And if you don't feel like a safe person today, we're not going to shame you. We're going to give you help. And somebody can step in and take care of that. And you can start to get some services you need to get the assistance to make this a better situation. Because at the end of the day, your child is a child of God and deserves that love and security and care. And there's a lot of people willing to help with that. I want to tell you about a friend of mine in my life.

And she has, we met through her having twins. And she has two girls the age of my twins. They're now 13. Extremely premature. They both started off with a lot of special needs. One still has special needs. Can I tell you, Dr. Jeff, she's totally quit her job, everything, because she has to work so hard. She's had to work so hard to get a child advocate, to get a special person at the school to help keep the children learning. I mean, it has become more than a full-time job to get her children, her two girls in public schools, what they need to just get through the day.

And I'd like to report they are more than getting through the day. They're both in their regular grade now, and they're both playing team hockey with a league, both the girls. But it took all that pain and suffering having to actually quit her job to navigate the system for her two little girls, Jeff. And I mean, I don't know how she did it. And she's just one person that I know doing it. It's very hard when you say the education system does not meet the needs of parents whose children are special needs. You are so right, Dr. Jeff.

Yes, Nancy. And what we find is that it's important that these parents have support groups, other people who are dealing with the same sorts of situations, so they can learn empowerment strategies, but also bare their souls as to some of the difficulties they face. And let me just say one last thing. Many parents know this with their children who have special needs. The fear that parents have that their children will not be picked on, will not be bullied, because they do have some of these needs, some of these special needs and wanting to keep them safe at all times. So when you look at all

of these things in totality, getting the right services, making sure that they live great lives and they can, because to me, potentially they're all geniuses, but it's unlocking the right key and making sure that they are safe. Those things can be very overwhelming. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we were talking about the death of a six-year-old little girl. Her 36-year-old mother, we believe, shot the little girl dead and then turned the gun on herself while dad had just left the home. There is no excuse. And I personally would prosecute this woman for murder.

But that said, do you know, Dr. Jeff, that a lot of these parents are shamed when they are overwhelmed raising their child, or they need help, they don't know what to do? Daphne Young from ChildHelp. Have you heard of parent shaming when parents are having problems, pressures, feeling overwhelmed, trying to raise their children, especially children with special needs? Parent shaming has gotten worse than ever because of social media. So right now, you can look at a world of perfect parents with every cupcake handmade, everyone's eating organic. And if you're running through a McDonald's drive-thru just trying to feed your family and you're stressed and you're managing 15 things at once, there can be a deep sense of shame just for not living up to the highest bar, much less if you make a mistake or if your child is hurting your care or if you failed to pick them up on time at a daycare situation. So we see the gamut of parent shaming and it breaks our hearts because good parents can feel like they're failing at every turn because of this.

They're shamed by the other parents. They're shamed by their relatives. So there's nobody for them to talk to unless they get into a support group. They don't have anybody to talk to. They feel like there's something wrong with them. And again, that is not legal insanity. I would totally prosecute this woman. She weren't already dead for murder and the murder of her six-year-old child. But I'm also hearing what these parents go through.

We had a friend, Dr. Jeff, and I think I've talked to you about this before, that adopted three boys from the same mom. They adopted one, then the mom had another boy. I think all in they got three. Two of them had autism. This mom, practicing lawyer, very well respected, up for judgeship. There was a point where the one older boy was totally out of control. She had to lock herself in a closet.

The boy was now taller than her, and she was afraid he was going to hit her with a baseball bat. And just did not know what to do. And loved the son, devoted her whole life to helping the son. But sometimes there's a point you don't know what to do and everybody shames you for that, Jeff. Yes, they do. And it all comes back to that concept in our society that children have to be perfect, that they have to be born a certain way. And if they have any kinds of issues at birth, that there's something wrong with them. No, everything is right with them.

And we have to find how we can help them in achieving their potential. But yes, sometimes our kids get older and if we don't have the right supports for them, it can go in a direction that becomes really, really difficult as they get older. And that's why it's so important that we stand behind all parents dealing with their special needs children and help them get what they need emotionally, intellectually, academically, and also bring support for the parents.

And again, we are not excusing what happened here, but I'm focusing on what the mother told other people before she killed herself and her child. Daphne Young from Child Help with us. Daphne, what would you have said to Shashmima Bardhan? I think any parent in crisis needs to hear there's help. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be overwhelmed. But your child needs love and care and safety. And if you don't feel like a safe person today, we're not going to shame you can start to get some services you need to get the assistance to make this a better situation. Because at the end of the day, your child is a child of God and deserves that love and security and care. And there's a lot of people willing to help with that. Now, earlier you heard from our friends at the sun dot com dealing with 25 year old mom, a three stepmom to two others, Oriana Myers.

We also note that she made statements that the husband was always out of town. Was that a get back murder of five children because she was angry? Well, it happens very often. I want to tell you about the case of Marsha Edwards. And in this case, this is in one of the most affluential, wealthy, privileged, gated community neighborhoods near the city of Atlanta. Take a listen to our friend Doug Richards at 11 Alive. Well, police say this is the case of a 58-year-old woman who shot and killed her adult son and daughter inside her home apparently yesterday. The woman then shot and killed herself. It's a story breaking hearts from Cobb County to Atlanta City Hall.

Marsha Edwards is the woman on the left, the mother of daughter Erin and son Christopher. Police say the mother fired the shots that killed all three Wednesday night. We didn't hear anything. There was no sign of any, you know, violence happening. Talia Cartal lives next door to the Cobb County condo police visited Wednesday evening. Cartal is a neighbor who'd gotten to know and appreciate the family. Just a really nice family, children. Aaron and Chris had exceedingly promising futures, just really bright, nice, kind people. And these were adult children. The daughter was 20, the son 24.

Take a listen to our Cut 26, 11 Alive, Jennifer Bellamy. Marsha Edwards' Facebook page is filled with images of her children, Chris and Aaron. She shared several pictures celebrating her son Chris's birthday in June, calling him her best guy and her daughter Aaron her best girl. And within the last few days, she posted multiple times from a trip to Italy with her daughter, sharing dozens of photos and videos over several days, visiting famous sites, smiling, toasting, and posing for the camera. And in July, Marsha posted pictures from an Independence Day trip to Destin with her son, Chris. Marsha also posted about Erin's internships with the city of Atlanta

and CNN. She shared articles Erin wrote while recently interning for NBC and traveled to New York to see her over the summer. Erin's page shows she was studying at Boston University. She frequently tagged her mother in posts, sharing pictures of them together and writing how proud she was of all her mom had accomplished when she was honored in April as a small business owner and community leader by the Women Works Media Group. That's one of Atlanta's 100 most powerful and influential women of 2019. Yet that mom, with all that going for her and how wonderfully her children had matured into real go-getters. She shoots her adult children and herself. Take a listen to Atlanta's 11 Alive Faith Albany.

Why would a mother who posted on social media, I couldn't ask for better children, kill her own children just days later? Well, police are still working that angle of why, but tonight the medical examiner's reports reveal several new details about this case. It shows Marsha Edwards shot her 24-year-old son, Christopher, at least five times in the Cobb County townhouse back in August. Police found the 24-year-old's body in bed. Police then found Christopher's 20-year-old sister, Erin, in another room on another floor of that townhouse. Her mother had shot her three times and then shot herself once in the chest

right there next to her daughter. We know that in that case, there had been a recent divorce. Was this some sort of a get back at the husband for starting a new life? And, of course, straight out to you, Steve Lampley, we know that in stark contradiction to what was posted on Facebook and throughout social media about how much she loved her children, how great they were, all they were accomplishing, she murdered them. So you can't believe social media posts. No, you can't. You can read anything on social media.

People make up stories. People intentionally make up stories. Excuse me. Elaborate greatly beyond what it is. You can't. You can't take what you see on social media unless you verify it yourself. And to you, James Shill, not 27 years, met your major case, now lawyer. I've seen a lot of cases where husbands or boyfriends, lovers kill a child and get back to the mother. But very rarely have I seen a reverse get back murder where the mom kills the children and then herself. In this particular case, though, James, I don't see this as a get back murder. I think the mother truly was overwhelmed and felt there was no one to talk to or whoever she did talk to wouldn't listen. Oh, absolutely. You know, I mean, you think about this. This lady has spent her entire life dealing with this. You know, she has, and I'm not taking up for what she's done.

I think you hit the nail on the head a minute ago, in the same way as you, I'm not excusing it. But she spent her entire life dealing with this. This lady has probably, you know, set herself to decide. The little girl was only six. Well, I know, but this has gone on for a while. And so, I mean, she has dealt with this for six years. It is overwhelming as a parent.

I think our doctor said a minute ago, you know, one of the things that we miss in society is being able to have parents with coping skills. And I think that sometimes you fail to get the mental health treatment that you need. You fail to take care of your own needs. And that just builds up. And I think sometimes it can overtake a person before they realize it's overtaken them. And it results sometimes in deadly situations like this. If you know of a case where you suspect tensions mounting and children in the home, please call Child Help. Daphne, what is your advice to friends and relatives who may notice a parent overwhelmed with raising their children? Whether we agree with it or not, it exists in their mind.

And for the sake of the child, the parent needs help. You want to look for signs and symptoms of stress, of shutting down, of not returning calls. And you want to be that gentle, non-shaming voice in their life that just calls up and says, hey, I imagine you're pretty stressed right now like we all are. Is there something I can do to take a little stress away? Can I run a few errands for you? Can I cook dinner and leave it on your doorstep? If you can take a little stress away? Can I run a few errands for you? Can I cook dinner and leave it on your doorstep? If you can take a little of that pressure off or just be a listening ear, hey, tell me what's going on today. Let's just go sit on our back porches for a second and talk.

You can change a life. And we have the Child Health National Child Abuse Hotline, 1-800-422-4453. And you can just share that number and say, hey, call Child Help or text or chat with them. Share your feelings. You don't have to be in crisis. You may just need self-soothing tips or a little parenting help or local resources. Hey, my child has autism. I need to know where there's a resource group. I'm shutting down and I need some immediate help, whether it's a nurse or somebody that can step in and just make that call and see what's available. National Child Abuse Hotline, 800-4-A-CHILD, 800-422-4453. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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